Applied Linguistics and Communication

Our MA Applied Linguistics and Communication gives you the opportunity to explore language and communication from a wide variety of perspectives. It is designed to cultivate your understanding of key concepts, issues and theories, while also developing your analytical and empirical skills, so you can investigate and deal with real-world language issues applicable to a variety of domains and careers.

Why choose this course?

- Applied linguistics has been taught by experienced, world-leading academics at Birkbeck since 1965. Our centre of teaching and research excellence has contributed greatly to the field over the years.

- Our most recent external examination reported: 'very high levels of professionalism and real quality in teaching. Students taking this unique course are getting the best in terms of professional practice and support. They are also allowed to develop their own interests and demonstrate independence of both skills and knowledge.’

- This Master's degree is unique in offering you a choice between two dissertation pathways: an empirical research investigation, or an independent library-based project on a relevant topic. It is ideal if you want to gain experience useful in furthering your career prospects and professional development, or experience useful if you have an interest in doctoral research and aspire to work in higher education.

What you will learn

Core modules will introduce you to qualitative and quantitative research methods for undertaking your own empirical and/or theoretical research into language and language behaviour and sub-domains of applied linguistics. These include, for example, first and second language acquisition, intercultural communication, language pedagogy and assessment, language impairment, language policy, language and identity, and language variation. You can also choose from a suite of option modules to tailor your degree to your interests or career aspirations.

How you will learn

This course is available to study full- or part-time. It has an evening timetable with classes in the evening. You will learn through lectures, seminars, workshops and one-to-one supervisory sessions.

You will also benefit from the experience of attending extracurricular seminars hosting guest speakers. These will introduce you to cutting-edge research and enable you to mix with language professionals working inside and outside of academia.

Highlights

- Birkbeck actively collaborates with the larger community of applied linguists throughout University of London colleges.

- We offer a number of bursaries for postgraduate students.

Careers and employability

Through gaining important knowledge in critical skills, theory and practice this MA Applied Linguistics and Communication allows you to build your career prospects and sharpen your professional goals. On successfully graduating you will have gained an array of important transferable skills, including:

- advanced (academic) oral and literacy skills

- critical and analytical skills

- qualitative research skills

- quantitative research skills.

Graduates can pursue a range of careers in which language and communication is central; these include, for example, posts in education, local government and the charity sector, public relations and the media, marketing and lexicography. Possible professions include:

- English as a second language (ESOL) teacher

- lexicographer

- speech and language therapist

- Civil Service fast-streamer

- primary school teacher

- translator.

We offer a comprehensive careers service - Careers and Enterprise - your career partner during your time at Birkbeck and beyond. At every stage of your career journey, we empower you to take ownership of your future, helping you to make the connection between your experience, education and future ambitions.